TIFF left grappling with Harvey Weinstein’s legacy

Up until this week, Harvey Weinstein’s double-chinned mug was still grinning amid a collage of celebrity faces at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox.

He was one of many beaming big shots in the second floor hall-of-fame corridor documenting decades of industry power at the Toronto International Film Festival. The 1993 photo (also featuring Blade Runner star Edward James Olmos) was plastered on a stretch of wall boasting a who’s who of the ’90s, from Brad Pitt to Kirstie Alley.

A 1993 photo (bottom centre) of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein with Edward James Olmos has now been removed from a wall at TIFF Bell Lightbox. (Jonathan Forani)

It’s a decade that marked major growth for TIFF. It was also a decade when many of Weinstein’s alleged assaults, revealed in explosive reports this month, occurred — some at Toronto locations during the festival — and when his former company Miramax Films wielded tremendous influence in Hollywood.

The small photo was a symbol of the man’s sizeable stature that now triggers an entirely new reaction as film institutions like TIFF grapple with the disgraced producer’s legacy. The industry faces tough questions. How deeply ingrained is the “casting couch” culture of sexual advances by powerful men? As actress Molly Ringwald put it in a Tuesday New Yorker essay, how many “Other Harveys” are there?

Theresa Tova, president of ACTRA’s Toronto chapter, says removing the photo is just the beginning of the conversation.

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“It can’t be all that they do,” she Tova says. “It can’t be all that we focus on.”

Tova isn’t sure what the next steps are for the actors’ union and other players like TIFF, but all are invited to the table.

“We’re inviting our industry partners to a discussion in many ways over the next week or two, and we’ll start figuring out what our objectives are industry-wide, identifying the gaps in the policies,” she says. “We need to educate, and we need to create regulations and protections.”

The festival so far has been quiet on the issue, releasing a short statement last week to film blog Indiewire and a single tweet: “No woman should have to face sexual harassment,” it read. “TIFF salutes the courage of all who speak up, and we commit to fostering a safe environment for women in film.” Festival directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey were not available for comment at time of writing, but a fuller response is expected in the coming days.

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, which hands out the annual Canadian Screen Awards, this week issued a more forceful statement, affirming, “We believe in creating a safe working environment and are committed to a zero-tolerance policy against abuse and sexual harassment, regardless of power and position, and call on all our partners to take every action necessary to make this a reality in our industry.”

Other industry organizations have acted in big ways in recent days, including the Weinstein Company itself ousting its contentious co-founder, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences expelling the man from the Oscar in-crowd, and the Producers Guild of America, which announced it will terminate Weinstein’s membership and create an Anti-Sexual Harassment Task Force.

Cultural critic and University of Toronto professor Rinaldo Walcott says action like that on behalf of groups is bigger than any expulsion or statement of condemnation.

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“Too often we think that that kind of censure does the work,” says Walcott, the director of U of T’s Women and Gender Studies Institute. “To remove him can’t be the beginning and end of the conversation about sexual violence on women, and particularly by powerful men in positions to make or break people’s careers.”

The industry and broader society needs a “deeper conversation.” He’d like to see TIFF continue efforts like its “Share Her Journey” campaign for mentoring women in film, and put resources into a series of conversations or other events that address the culture surrounding behaviour like Weinstein’s.

Researcher Barb MacQuarrie has seen many organizations grapple with cultures of harassment in her career. Though much is being said about the entertainment “industry,” the work will come down to each individual group, she says.

“Really we are talking about a culture shift and it takes leadership, vision, commitment, resources, time and determination,” says MacQuarrie, community director at Western University’s Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children. “Each organization needs to develop policies that identify acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, clear reporting procedures that include alternative routes for reporting in case the person you are intended to report to is the one harassing you, and investigation procedures.”

As more and more allegations of harassment come to light in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, one string of stories sticks out for ACTRA’s Tova: The “Me Too” campaign in which women (and some men) have posted the simple phrase across social media to signal that they too have experienced sexual harassment or assault. Tova herself joined that movement and has been fielding many calls from union members this month. The problem is clearly bigger than one American mogul. It’s at home too.

“Are we immune to that phenomenon of powerful men going after women? No, you’d be a fool to say that we don’t have the same issue,” she says, imploring that the conversation not stop as the headlines fade.

“What I keep telling the women who call me is that a fire has been lit. When the spotlight of the press is gone, we will still be blazing on this subject. Time for silence is gone.”